Blog - Improve your Current Awareness Strategy

Your organisation’s success depends on information and, without an efficient flow, organisations face insurmountable challenges. The legal information function knows how much time and money is saved by using the right tools for the job. But how can we ensure the rest of the firm does? What opportunities are you missing out on, and what might this look like in practice?

A recent post on business development for law firms stated, “law firm newsletters are a lot of work. And honestly, I don’t know any firm that does them well. In fact, you probably should not send a boring newsletter stuffed with tidbits about your firm’s new staff members and sales pitches”. We couldn’t agree more.

This post has come out of an initiative to improve communications with our clients here at Vable. As a client you need to talk to us, and we want to make it as easy as possible. After all, everyone values an organisation with which they can communicate promptly and efficiently.

These notes are taken from a most satisfying CLSIG event with Alex G Smith. It was a timely wake up call for how machine learning is being perceived; instead of the marauding AI robots of horror movies, it should be the thought of messy misused data keeping us up at night. Above all it confirmed what most of us already know; that information professionals have been designing and providing ‘AI’ for years. Many things currently being touted as such are nothing more than data and algorithms. Analytics and automatic documentation is not AI.

Nothing should be read in isolation. As I was putting together notes from Robert’s recent webinar, this article about busy managing partners caught my eye. It said ‘[i]n 2018, the legal industry has more communication channels than we did even five years ago. Some are high in quality. I worry, however, that our communication channels are splintering the industry into sharper and more brittle factions.

As an information professional, you’re essentially managing the current awareness component of the email inboxes of your entire organisation. It’s no easy task - but at least you can be grateful that you probably deal with more digital sources than hard copies.

One commentator recently noted that the fastest growing market at the moment is for personal information.1 Everybody wants to know everything and our reliance on being technologically connected means we are increasingly comfortable with making our private lives visible. And until now, the regulatory framework has struggled to protect the individual against a wholesale requirement of providing a discoverable trail of personal data.

It’s impossible to talk about libraries these days without talking about change. As the needs of users change, and as technology changes, libraries must adapt in order to continue to serve their users and organisations well. So as libraries are asked to change quickly - and incorporate new technologies - some are turning to the software development world to adapt their methods of fast-paced working for the library.

In a world where girl scouts are able to earn badges in robotics and cyber security1, it pays to keep up with technology. Particularly when it comes to your library. Work practices are evolving at rapid rates, and failure to grow your skillset with them could well be detrimental. When was the last time you posed the question, how current is your library? We’ve compiled a roundup of the latest tech trends to guide you through the confusing maze.

Professional services organizations are in possession of specialized superior knowledge that their customers simply do not have, meaning that their main product is knowledge. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that their competitive advantage hinges upon the quality of knowledge within their organization. Knowledge must be timely, accurate, relevant, tailored and proactive. This is what will set you apart from your competition.